Sunday, January 8, 2012

Kaleidoscope Quilt Finished

It has taken quite a while, but this quilt is no longer a UFO:

"Stack-n-whack" kaleidoscope quilt, approx 2m by 155cm.

The blocks were pieced in about 2001, after I watched an episode of "Simply Quilts" featuring the inventor of the "stack-n-whack" technique, Bethany Reynolds. I loved the idea, and went straight to my fabrics to see if I had anything I could use to try it. I only had enough of one fabric to get the six design repeats I needed. I chose the dusky pink for the triangles because the main fabric has touches of that pink through it. The blocks then sat around for a number of years. I didn't have enough of the same fabric to turn the top into a rectangular shape, and didn't know what to do.

In about 2006 or 2007 I found another Japanese fabric with a black background and the same pink, which I used to fill in a few gaps and create the rectangle shape. A friend gave me the fabric I've used in the border, which I do think is an ugly fabric, but it seems to work. (The same friend also had some of the pink fabric which she gave me to use for the binding.) But I didn't have anywhere to spread out the quilt to baste it.

In 2008, I was told about Sharon Schamber's basting method using two planks of wood. (You can watch her videos on YouTube; here's Part 1.) With this method, you don't spread the whole quilt out, so I was able to baste the quilt on my kitchen table. I did that in about the middle of 2008, and started to do some of the quilting, but it was giving me problems, so I put it aside yet again.